Web scraping and content theft have much in common. Some people use scraping as a way to make money on behalf of those who write unique and original SEO optimized web content. They do this by republishing the content posted initially by others and literally stealing the traffic of the websites that originally hosted the content.

To make things worse, the search engine ranking of the websites containing the copied content is sometimes higher (often due to a higher domain authority. This means that your own content outranks your...own content. It can be very frustrating. Google is developing strategies to solve this problem, as it causes a lot of problems for people who are creative and talented.

The changes are meant to make original content always rank higher than the republished content and put an end to the nightmare that some people who use SEO in their content could be experiencing. For any legitimate business, scrapping is a continuous threat and this must end as soon as possible.

Google's New Scraper Report Tool

The majority of businesses are familiarized with scrapping, knowing that others may have already copied their content. But, they do not know the full extent and implications of this negative practice. Google's new scraper report tool was first announced on Twitter by the head of the web spam team at Google, Matt Cutts.

The tool is actually a form that you can complete in case you notice that some of your content was used elsewhere. You will have to input the URL that corespondents to the involved content along with the search engine results that show the higher rank of the copied content in comparison to the original.

Before this tool was available, the only way you could report stolen content was through Google's DMCA system. This system is difficult to use and consumes a lot of time.

Completing the form does not ensure a removal of the links containing the copies, but Google's spam team is constantly monitoring the reported links for finding better ways to improve the search algorithm, so that the original content can always rank higher. Just removing links may not have the best results in the long run, but Google is trying to overcome this problem in a smart way. The benefits for content creators and their SEO are obvious.

The following domains are affected by republished and copied content: digital publishing, social media, e-commerce, forums, travel companies, airlines and different directories and classifieds. With the Google's new scraper report tool available to content creators, people who use scrapping may have to think twice before trying this strategy again.